Shiitake Plug Spawn 100 count - Shiitake Dowel Spawn - Grow your own Edible Gourmet Mushrooms

Bought these as a Christmas gift for a couple family members. Product was great. It came with clear directions on what to do. The whole family had a great time plugging up the logs and finding a nice shady spot for them. It was so much fun we would love to do them again for our house but I don’t think we get enough shade. What a great product this was, a perfect gift. Can’t wait for the mushrooms!!

The product arrived with mycelium growing all over it. I put it in the refrigerator and forgot about it for about two months. I found some freshly cut oak trees and cut some 4 foot long by about 5 inch logs weighted two weeks to a month. Drilled my holes, put the plugs in poured the wax over it and forgot to water them to keep them moist. I moved the logs by my faucet almost a year later. Started watering them and mushroom s are popping out. I did everything wrong and I’m now getting mushrooms ! I’m sure if I had put them in the logs when I first got them, watered the logs at least once a week. I have no doubt I’d have a ton of shrooms. No doubt I will be ordering more from here again, they work!!!!

I’ve ordered these in the past with no issue once but the last shipment came like this. They are not returnable. Even when the product arrives damaged? They are covered with green soupy mold! Nasty. The spores are most likely dead. I would love a replacement but I’m scared it will look like this. I will adjust my review if I get a good replacement. Since this is sent by small business I’m not sure how this happened. Mold is a natural enemy of mushroom growing.

I cut some four foot long, six inch around longs from oak tree tops after we logged our woods. I build a long cabin type shape with them and drilled them to put the plugs in. One year later I am harvesting Shiitakes. Love these mushrooms and the success I’ve had growing the mushrooms.

We did this kit, using two two-foot oak logs, recently cut; we drilled with 5/16" bit, hammered in these towels, melted some beeswax in a thrift-shop-sourced slow-cooker and a paint-brush, and then put the log off the ground a good bit, about four feet, to keep soil contaminants (fungus) from populating our new mushroom garden. I will post an update to this in about six to twelve months! But I wanted you to know how easy this was, and how excited my family is to be gardening again and in such an uncommon way (mushrooms!) - so we are going to try some other mushroom spore kits soon too.

I inoculated 3 silver maple logs today. The advice to use a 5/16 drill bit is perfect. I marked the drill bit with White-Out at a little over one inch so I could just drill down to where the bit was marked. I had put the plugs, still in their unopened plastic bag inside the mailer they came in, in the fridge for about 5 days. These plugs appear well inoculated with shiitake spawn; when taken out of the bag, many of them stuck together with thick clumps of white spawn (and a few grains that the spawn must have been originally grown on) holding them together. I just read that thicker bark on red maple meant higher yields in an online study; I have enough plugs left to inoculate one nice thicker-barked section of log, so that's what I'll do tomorrow. UPDATE, August 2020: well this summer's cool weather gave me one huge shiitake, and two smaller ones; hopefully the photo will upload.

My granny used to take the older cousins out into the countryside of the Midwest looking for edibles. Edible mushrooms were always high on the list of desirables. I have bought several grow your own mushroom kits, and they usually work, but don't produce the bounty promised. I spent the better part of two days drilling, plugging, and pounding in these spawn plugs into eight different logs around my property. My land gets a lot of rain, and the logs were all in the shade. It gets quite warm for the spring, summer, and fall where I am. So, putting the plugs in after the last cold day in March led me to believe that I would see something, anything by the first part of fall. Sad to say, but I don't think that these will produce any viable fungi whatsoever. I had high hopes based on the other reviews. Should one or more of the logs fruit later, I promise to revise my review.

Packaged simply and efficiently, arrived quickly, easy to insert into log as per directions. Plugs already had mycelium growth, a good sign! I had a question that I emailed to seller and received response in under 24 hrs. Highly recommend, now we'll have to wait to see if they grow... which is 4-6 months down the road.